There's a reason they call it a "comfort zone". It's comfortable! Like that pair of jeans long overdue for a trip in the wash, the comfort zone is a tough place to break free from. It feels good to be comfortable. Why in the world would we ever want to disrupt that?

Two weeks ago, I bit the bullet and joined the gym close to my home. To be clear, I love my gym in the city. It's close, it's cheap, I get along well with the staff. I know where everything is, and I know how to adjust it to fit me perfectly. I even know who the crazies are (tai chi man, anyone?) and what time of day to avoid (anything past 11:30 am). But now that my work hours have returned to human size, hitting the gym for 2 hours in the middle of the day gets expensive in terms of office time lost. Now, as many of you know I also have a fairly good home gym set up as well. Treadmill, squat stands, barbell with bumpers, adjustable dumbbell, pull-up bar, AbMat and plyo box. But there are things I can't manage at home (heavy leg work, mostly). So, a second gym membership was my solution.

The local gym is the one that my nutritional and posing coach work at, so I was familiar with it. Well, familiar with the walk from the front desk to the Diet Dude's office, the room we practice posing in, and the women's locker room. But that's it. I didn't even tour the facilities before I joined (I know, I'm an idiot). It was a good deal, I needed (wanted) more fitness access on the weekends, and the location was prime. That was enough for me.

I joined on the 15th, right after tax season. It took me until this past Thursday to work up the balls to actually GO. Amusing, isn't it? Here's a girl who would live in the gym if she had the opportunity, and yet she had to psyche herself up to go to a new one. What's up with that?

The gym at home is at home. Which means I might know someone there. Ick.

At my gym in the city, I'm one of very few women who are relatively hard core. The gym at home is full of women who just competed in a figure competition.

Did I mention that I might KNOW someone at the gym at home?

Add to the above silliness the fact that I don't know where ANYTHING is, and you've got my recipe for gym-unease. But I pushed it aside and went to the gym for the first time to work legs on Thursday. And boy did my workout SUCK :)

The squat stand I used was a half rack (instead of my usual power cage) and the bar was either too high or too low. Waah.

There are so many machines that I wandered around searching for the prone leg curl (it was next to the seated leg curl that I wound up using). I tried to use a mulit-hip machine (never again) instead of the ab/adductor machine that I couldn't find. That too was right next to what I eventually wound up using. Waah.

The amount of time I spent attempting to find and adjust things to my liking made for an incredibly long and less-than-intense workout, where I felt like I looked like the HUGEST gym newb ever. Big Waah.

Not one to give up, I returned on Friday to work Back. It was a little better. I had more of a clue :) Attempted to do heavy legs again on Saturday, slightly more success there. I still prefer to hit legs in the city, but I think I'll manage in the new gym. Particularly because it turns out that they have both a powerlifting room AND a huge empty space with sprint lanes, kettlebells, more free weights (and did I mention SPACE?) in the back.

Who knows how long it will take me to get comfortable there. Until then, each training session is another trip ventured beyond my comfort zone. Which is probably good. Just...uncomfortable :)

On the news this morning, they ran a short segment about how gaining a pound or two a year increases a woman's risk of breast cancer. OK. That's a valid warning. Not new (if you Google it you can find reports going back to 2007), but certainly newsworthy.

But the footage that they ran in the background was of all (anonymous) obese women as they walked down the street. And when I say obese, I'm not referring to "having a BMI over 25" obese. I'm talking "over 300 lbs, candidates for gastric bypass" obese.

The average woman watching that broadcast wouldn't see herself in that risk group at all. So what did the news report accomplish? Aside from pissing me off? Nothing.

It seems that whenever weight is a factor in a news story, the visual is always excessive. Overweight doesn't always mean obese. And until people realize that, and see themselves in the category of being at risk for health issues, these stories will become increasingly relevant.

In choosing to run stock footage that provided some shock value, the morning news missed out on actually reporting.

The Double Down comes either grilled or fried with KFC’s Original Recipe. The fried version has 540 calories, 32 grams of fat and 1,380 milligrams of sodium. The grilled version has 460 calories, 23 grams of fat and 1,430 milligrams of sodium.

You know people will order the grilled version thinking that it's healthy....after all, there's no bun.

I've been switching over to measuring by weight as opposed to volume, particularly because I am the QUEEN of getting far more to fit into a spoon/cup than the laws of physics should allow. It's seriously impressive. I think it's a girl thing (like getting the rest of the dishes to fit into the dishwasher). It's a tough switch, because you just wind up getting so much LESS food. But really, who are you fooling by calling it a serving when it's really 1.5? Sure enough your body knows the difference. Why lie to yourself?